Mario Kart is a franchise that draws interest from both gamers and non-gamers alike. And if it’s a full Mario Kart experience with a variety of tracks and multiplayer, we wouldn’t bet against it. Perhaps Nintendo is banking on Mario Kart Tour to outperform Super Mario Run. While the report didn’t reveal the actual conversion rate, we know that at the 78 million download mark, only five percent of downloads resulted in a sale. According to a 2017 earnings report, Super Mario Run had been downloaded 200 million times but failed to reach the targeted 10 percent conversion rate of downloads to full purchases. It’s worth noting that Nintendo wasn’t exactly happy with Super Mario Run’s sales figures. Both Fire Emblem Heroes and, more recently, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp offered “free” experiences that attempted to entice users with microtransactions. It’s always possible that Nintendo goes the route of its other mobile games with a free-to-play model.
Although the free-to-start model makes a bunch of sense for a game like Mario Kart Tour, Nintendo hasn’t divulged any concrete information about the game.